Revolut vs Metro card

brianposter

VanillaSkies wrote: »

Does it always remain a worse rate? (And out of general curiosity, why Greece?)

No. As edicky said, the rates are calculated at different times and go up and down all the time so at any one time there is no fixed relationship.
It is simply that while Interbank rate does not involve any charges, Mastercard are charging you about 0.5% for changing your euros.
Mastercard may have a different charge for another currency.


You mentioned Greece and the EU is not all euros.

eDicky

brianposter wrote: »

Look at the rates they offer for converting pounds to euros, and euros to pounds.

That's where I fail to see a 'spread of almost 1%', and the reason I asked for a source. But you could be right, and it's my lousy math - I see a difference of 0.39% between yesterday's MasterCard GBP/EUR and EUR/GBP rates. Can you give your example and calculation? (Or anyone else?)

brianposter

eDicky wrote: »

That's where I fail to see a 'spread of almost 1%', and the reason I asked for a source. But you could be right, and it's my lousy math - I see a difference of 0.39% between yesterday's MasterCard GBP/EUR and EUR/GBP rates. Can you give your example and calculation? (Or anyone else?)

Its not your maths. If I do the calculation now the spread is less than 0.3% so it looks like the spread is not fixed - and so presumably one cannot be precise about the Mastercard charge.

brianposter

Just done another check and the Mastercard spread is now about 0.6%.

VanillaSkies

Hi,

I think I vaguely get the idea of what "spread" means but, could someone please explain? Is it the extra charge you get for exchanging money? Because when I compare Revolut with Mastercard for how much they give per 100 GBP, each of them has different figures.

Thank you:)

brianposter

Someone will normally be buying pounds from you or selling pounds to you. You do not know what they do with those pounds or the other currency so you do not know how much you are being charged for your particular transaction.
However you do know the rate at which they will reverse the transaction,and the difference in the two rates is called the spread.
For practical purposes you might as well assume that you are being charged half the spread, in addition to any other charges.